Reclaiming Feminine Wisdom in a Masculine World with Author Alanna Kaivalya
This is Wendy Halley, and you're listening to Lucid Cafe. Hey. Welcome to another episode of Lucid Cafe, a podcast exploring healing, consciousness, and the complexities of being human. Alright. Getting close to the release of Raven's Daughter, my new metaphysical fantasy book, which if all goes well, will be available on May 27.
Wendy:Fingers crossed. I'm thinking that the theme of this book, which is actually about a mind virus of deception, might be timely. What do you think?! I thought I'd share a glimpse of the storyline. Are you ready?
Wendy:I'm such a dork. Alright. Here we go. In a battle between dreams and deception, the fate of reality rests in the hands of a reluctant shapeshifter. Meredith Heller, one of the authors who was kind enough to contribute an endorsement for the book, suggests that "Raven's Daughter speaks to the critical junction we face at this moment in our human evolution."
Wendy:It's a bit intimidating to share your work with others, especially when it's a project that means a lot to you. But when someone you admire and respect reacts that kind of favorably to it, and that's just a snippet of Meredith's glowing endorsement, I can't help but feel like it was worth the zillion hours it seemed to take to bring this story to life. Alright. I'll shut up about it for now. Well, I'll shut up about it until the next episode when my old podcast buddy Claire joins me on Lucid Cafe to talk about Raven's Daughter in a lot more detail.
Wendy:And then you can hear the story behind the story. It was so fun to get the band back together again. Claire and I cohosted an irreverent and frequently inappropriate advice podcast back in 2019 called Inside the Box with Claire and Wendy. I'll throw a link in the show notes if you wanna check it out. You never know when you might need some advice about, like, about maybe how to start a cult.
Wendy:We got you covered. Alright. In today's episode, I speak with the inspiring Alanna Kaivalya about the inherent yet lost power of the feminine. Although women today have greater opportunity to make our own choices, build independent lives, and craft powerful careers, we all too often forge our path by following the trajectory laid out by men. By emulating what men identify as desirable goals and strategies, we deny our truest most innate feminine qualities and desires.
Wendy:This episode is not about bashing men. It's just an invitation to let your innate qualities rise to the surface. Alanna's new book, The Way of the Satisfied Woman offers an alternative path for women and for any person who cares to focus more on the feminine than the masculine. The path of the feminine is simply different. Perfect in its own right yet integral and complementary to the path of the masculine.
Wendy:In this conversation and in her book, Alanna shows us how embodying feminine energy sets us free, relaxes us, and allows us to more completely manifest the things that are most important to us, including connection, communion, and compassion. Alana is a best selling author, educator, thought leader, and expert on mythology, spirituality, psychology, and women's empowerment. The author of Sacred Sound and Myths of the Asanas, she earned a doctorate in mythological studies with an emphasis in-depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and is the host of the satisfied woman podcast. Please enjoy my conversation with Alanna Kaivalya. Alanna, thank you so much for joining me.
Alanna:Absolutely. It's a pleasure.
Wendy:You have a new book out. It's called The Way of the Satisfied Woman, Reclaiming Feminine Power. It strikes me as a calling card.
Alanna:That's a great way to put it, actually. Yeah.
Wendy:And, you know, I have to say, it struck me that you're a woman on a mission. I could feel your passion around your messaging. Like, please, please.
Alanna:Absolutely. Yeah. It's I mean, it's time. Really, it's time. And I I have felt the calling, truly a calling, to write this book for probably about fifteen years.
Alanna:That's how long I've been talking about femininity to women and letting these ideas and the things that I write about percolate within me, talking to them with my audience. Something really drove me to get this done about a year and a half ago. I felt really compelled. All I can think about is that it was some sort of divine outreach coming through me saying a lot of this needs to happen now because having its release a couple of months ago and being out at this time, I mean, women are going through so much right now. And I can't imagine that the timing could have been better for this project.
Wendy:Yeah, it does seem that way, doesn't it?
Alanna:It does.
Wendy:Kind of a shit show.
Alanna:Yeah, there's a lot going on. We have a lot to contend with. I think one of the great advantages is that the time that we live in affords us as women more opportunities, chances, and choices than ever before. There are things that you and I can do today that even our mothers couldn't do. It wasn't until I believe the mid-80s that a woman could even have her own bank account without a man co signing for it.
Wendy:Get the hell out.
Alanna:I promise that's true. I mean, think about even the sexual revolution of women having birth control and being able to take charge of their own bodies and make decisions about family planning. I mean, that's within the last fifty to sixty years. So we have opportunities right now that are brand new for us, but what we don't have is a legacy of what to do with these choices or a culture that centers and values what's important to the feminine woman. We live in a patriarchal culture that has been designed primarily by men and for men.
Alanna:While that's great for them, it wasn't designed and built for us. So we have the chance right now to question our environment, to question our culture, and instead of continuing along traditional pathways and models of success and what life should look like, we can instead think about what life needs to look like for us as women and center our own values. So that's really what propelled me into this work and into this conversation. Just the recognition that things are different for us and it doesn't make it better or worse. It's actually fine that there are differences between the masculine and feminine.
Alanna:One is not more valuable than the other. So we have a lot of work to do to revalue femininity, but also to inquire within ourselves about what's important to us and what models for satisfaction look like for the modern day woman.
Wendy:So much to unpack there. The question that's been burning for me is I would love to hear your take on how women got so lost in the mix.
Alanna:Yeah. I don't I don't think we intended it. I think we were bamboozled.
Wendy:Okay.
Alanna:If you look up how old the patriarchy is, we get answers from between 8,000 and 3,000 years. They've had many millennia of training in diminishing femininity, in even training us that the qualities that make us powerful feminine women are not admired, not valued, are even potentially dangerous or scary. If you think about one of my basic examples that everybody knows of are the witch trials, the Salem witch trials.
Alanna:Women, who have a powerful intuition, which is one of the most incredible qualities of femininity, were not just diminished and devalued, but terrorized, tortured, and burned at the stake. Because women's intuition, women's emotional depth, the things that make us truly powerful, unique, able to manifest the greatest potential of our lives are the things that can potentially destabilize patriarchal power and centralization. So there's been a lot of work done to try and minimize that. Even in our eyes, I think many women don't even wake up in the morning and realize how minimized and oppressed they are because it's just we've it's just what we know. You know?
Alanna:It's just our normal everyday lives.
Wendy:I was just gonna comment on that. I mean, this tendency goes back thousands of years. Right? It's become kind of a baseline and a norm. So how would you even know that you've lost yourself or that you are complicit or a victim of, I guess, I don't know, for lack of a better word, I guess a cultural worldview?
Alanna:I think there's much more presentation in the culture of this term privilege in the last five, maybe even ten years, but definitely the last five years. Culturally, we're starting to recognize where privilege is a problem. My best definition of privilege is rights that we didn't earn. There are people in this culture who walk around with privilege rights they didn't earn. They can just move freely.
Alanna:They can do what they want without consequence. I think for women, the best place to start is to notice where things are uncomfortable, where there is discomfort. That's one of the little triggers that the feminine has to know that there needs to be a course correction. Something that I talk about in my Stop Calling Us Crazy course is that women by default, we wake up every day and we have to carefully navigate our day. We have to actually take energy and time and consideration to make sure that when we say something, it's going to land well on the ears of our audience, particularly if that audience is of the masculine persuasion.
Alanna:We have to consider how we show up in our business or our career. If we show up with too many ideas, then we're called bossy. If we show up with too much direction and confidence, we're then called bitchy. And in our relationships, we really have to temper our natural cycle of emotions, which is part of the gift of being a biological female. Those hormonal shifts every month are for a reason and a purpose.
Alanna:They're like the litmus test for how we are in our world and by default, everyone else that is in that world with us. And when we have an emotional response to something, when we second guess it, when we oppress it, that causes suffering for us. But the reason is we're trying to soften the blow for those around us because if we're too emotional we're called crazy. So these are just little things that are built into the culture every day that women have to deal with all the time that don't allow us to manifest really who we are. We have to keep ourselves on lockdown almost everywhere we go.
Wendy:It strikes me as you're talking of just how insidious it is too because it's such a I mean, you think generation after generation after generation, women have been kind of passing these messages of put yourself on the back burner, keep your mouth shut.
Alanna:Yep. And we're even taught that that's what a woman is. Right? That a woman is supposed to be quiet because that's what her value That we're supposed to smile because we're so pretty when we smile. If we're not smiling, well then we better change it.
Alanna:We have bought into this concept that women are meek, we're soft, we're complacent, we're subservient. None of those qualities in my research are coincidental with femininity. The feminine isn't quiet. The feminine is wild, loud, vibrant, unpredictable, changeable. Yes, moody, emotional.
Alanna:That's part of our gift. Where is the value for those qualities in this culture? In writing this book, I felt a tremendous responsibility and also a recognition that there's a lot of work to be done here. Not only do I feel like I need to not convince women but maybe awaken them to the fact that the life that they're living that they've been given wasn't built for them, but to also retrain them to what femininity is. Because a lot of women, they think when I say something like, Oh, The Way of the Satisfied Woman.
Alanna:In fact, here's a funny story. I have a new business with this book. I sold my last business and I'm going all in on this project because of I believe how important it is.
Wendy:Good for you!
Alanna:Yeah. Thank you. So I went on Facebook and I started my business page, The Way of the Satisfied Woman and I was shut down.
Wendy:What? Because
Alanna:Facebook, I. E, the patriarchy, saw the title, The Way of the Satisfied Woman, and decided for itself that there's only one way a woman can be satisfied and thought that I was selling sex.
Wendy:Get the fuck out.
Alanna:Uh-uh, that's a true story. So I tried again, and I was shut down again. Three times Facebook has said no to me being a satisfied woman because the narrative is that if we're satisfied, obviously someone is pleasing us sexually because that's all that women want. Let me tell you, dear listener, women want so much more than that, and satisfaction happens on every level. And the reason I chose that word and that title for my book and this business and this project is because I was blown away by the definition of satisfaction, which is you ready for this?
Wendy:I'm ready.
Alanna:Satisfaction is defined as the pleasure derived from the fulfillment of your wishes and needs.
Wendy:I see sex is not in there.
Alanna:Isn't that weird? Yeah. I mean, could be. That could that is actually one of our needs.
Wendy:Yeah. You can be sexually satisfied, but it is not part of the definition of satisfaction.
Alanna:It is not. We are multifaceted human beings. We have a lot of different needs and really novel idea. Planet has has an desire to get their needs met. But for us to leave a legacy and really make the most of this life, we also want to have our wishes tended to.
Alanna:And what I loved about this definition was the idea of pleasure and fulfillment because pleasure is an inherent feminine quality. It is the feminine that feels pleasure. The feminine runs pleasure through her body and then by nature that radiates outward and that's actually how others in her environment are able to feel pleasure and joy. It comes through us. So we need that.
Alanna:We need to get that as much as possible so that it benefits those around us. Fulfillment to me is not linear. So in our patriarchal culture, we're pretty hell bent on traditional notions of success, which are very linear and directed and at all costs and sometimes at the expense of others. The feminine doesn't do things that way. The feminine is only feeling pleasure and joy when those in her environment and her community that she adores are also happy and okay.
Alanna:So feminine pleasure and satisfaction is actually a communal process. And it's also an ever evolving process. That sense of fulfillment doesn't have a finish line. It doesn't have a goal. There's always a conversation happening, and there's a constant daily feeling of satisfaction, fulfillment, pleasure in this process, which is why it's both feminine and necessary for women today.
Wendy:Beautiful. You know what would be probably a good direction to go in right now is to define feminine versus masculine.
Alanna:Absolutely. So there I mean, there are there are a lot of qualities to each and neither is better than the other. It's simply that our culture has centered masculinity and not even a good version of it. This is where we get this idea of toxic masculinity.
Wendy:Toxic masculinity.
Alanna:I don't like the word toxic because that to me indicates a poison that can't be fixed. I say distorted. We just change the distortion and we get back to the original energy because the original energy of some of these masculine principles are actually beautiful and great. The other thing I want to say before I do my definition is that every human has both masculine and feminine within them. Okay?
Alanna:So even the most feminine woman at times will want to bring forward some of the masculine energy in order to get shit done, get to a deadline, be a leader in a community. We can kind of navigate our way through both at all times. However, every human will lean more to one than the other and that's what I call our natural polarity. So, masculinity at its peak, it's it's two greatest qualities are logic and reason. Masculinity loves logic and reason.
Alanna:It also loves direction, completion, leadership, and nurturing. It loves to make things grow and to foster things. Femininity at its foremost, its greatest qualities are its intuition and emotional depth. It is also creative. It has the ability to create from almost nothing and whether that's procreation or just any form of creativity, that's in built within the feminine.
Alanna:We are also pleasure filled. We are community oriented and we love collaboration and connection. So, again, there's a lot of qualities under both headings but those tend to be the primary ones that we think about and speak about most often and the feminine is nourishing and receptive. So, the feminine is if you think about the feminine as a a literal receptacle. I mean, think about just sort of the most base heterosexual version of sex.
Alanna:Right. Heaven and receives, the masculine penetrates. So, we also are filled when we procreate with that creative energy inside of a womb. So there is a receptivity that is inherent in our nature, meaning we want to take in, we want to be nourished, we want to accept and receive. Now you find me a woman today who's capable of sitting back relaxing and receiving because we've been trained out of it.
Alanna:We're here. They're like, oh no, we need to be all things for everybody. We need to do all things for everybody. We need to be inexhaustibly available at all times. Our worth is in how much we can give.
Alanna:And if we don't continue giving, we are worth less. That is an incorrect.
Wendy:Makes me want to take a nap just thinking about all of
Alanna:Yeah, think
Wendy:a lot women And that is how I live my life though.
Alanna:Yeah, yeah and a lot of women could use a nap but what happens when the feminine shifts into receptivity is that she inspires the masculine around her to give. And one of the greatest things the masculine does for the feminine is to be generous, to provide, to protect. Okay, now, I know that those like, it's not old school notions of providership. I don't need a man to make me money. Especially not today.
Alanna:But we are in partnership. This is a relational world. And when there is a masculine present, that providership can be just his presence. It can be his love. It can be the services rendered.
Alanna:Like, there are a lot of ways. So, we don't have to go to that sort of full definition because that triggers me too. Trust me but provide is a masculine tenant. The ability to step up and go, the feminine is in need. Let me generously give.
Alanna:Right?
Wendy:Not dictate. Correct. Yeah.
Alanna:Not dictate. Not power over but power with. It is the the beauty, the creativity, the wildness of the feminine that inspires the masculine to action. And the masculine loves to act. If the feminine is doing it for the masculine all the time, the masculine is actually disempowered.
Wendy:Yeah. There's imbalance. Yeah.
Alanna:It's a distortion.
Wendy:You you know what is coming to mind? I have a shamanic bent. Yeah. And a shamanic practice, long time practice. And I'm thinking about some indigenous prophecies that were revealed back remember the Mayan calendar at the end of the end of the the world in 2012?
Alanna:Survived 2012. Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. Well, at that time, I mean, it was basically looking at the Mayan long count calendar.
Alanna:Right.
Wendy:And some of the indigenous folks revealed some of their prophecies at that time. And they were talking about they were in a a transition from one world age to a new world age.
Alanna:Sure.
Wendy:And the suggestion was that the world age and they typically last about five thousand ish years, the world ages. At least that's the Mayan long count calendar is a little over five thousand years in length. And the world age that's coming to a close right now was dominated by the masculine. And that the new world age that we're entering allegedly, if I understood it correctly, is a balance between the masculine and the feminine.
Alanna:Yeah.
Wendy:So perfect timing, Alana.
Alanna:I mean, I'm I'm I'm on program. I I want it to happen, and I believe in that. You know, I don't even this might sound strange to listeners given that I've just written written the book, The Way of the Satisfied Woman but I I'm not even looking for the patriarchy to shift to a matriarchy. I don't want any more of this power over. You know?
Wendy:I'll drink to that.
Alanna:Yeah. I I want power with. And there's so much benefit in partnership and collaboration and you know another detriment of the patriarchy that we live in is this idea of power over but also the emphasis on individualism and individuality and this DIY nature of things. I mean, I I certainly bought into it as a young woman. Do things at all cost.
Alanna:You you can do it by yourself. You don't need anybody else. Succeed at all costs. You too. Yeah.
Wendy:I'm guilty. Yep. Absolutely. You're independent.
Alanna:Yeah. Sure. Because that's all we know and that's what we hold up as the pillar of accomplishment but what what that also does, unfortunately, is it isolates us and we do know psychologically speaking that one of the best ways to gain power over someone is to isolate them and our brains, everyone, you know, anybody, brains, our psyche are hardwired for connection. We're here to be relational beings. It is actually impossible to live an entire life on your own.
Wendy:True. People
Alanna:are just there and people have an effect on you. And the way that you relate to and with others will make or break really your existence in this life. So I want us to let go of that individuality, I want to let go of that power over and really get back to the relationality. And one of the things I talk about in the book is that, yes, there's a lot of work for women to do, Absolutely. But number one, we didn't get ourselves in this spot and so we can't get ourselves out.
Alanna:So, part of the work we have to do is to actually inspire and encourage those around us, those who love us, to work with us, to really be all in on this project of creating our satisfaction because it's going to trickle out to them and I don't know if you're from a place where this was a saying in your family but it wasn't mine. If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
Wendy:No, that was not a saying in my family.
Alanna:Right? Mama or not, all of us, feminine women, are mamas.
Wendy:I did like it though, yeah.
Alanna:So if the lady's not happy, it is impossible in any environment, in any community, that if the woman is uncomfortable, diminished, repressed, that's going to result in discomfort and unhappiness for everyone.
Wendy:Right, so fellas, you're doing us a disservice, I guess, right? Yeah. Well, as you're talking, it does feel overwhelming. It's like, how do you step forward and break away from those patterns when they're so deeply unconscious.
Alanna:Yeah. And ingrained in everybody. Mhmm. Look. It is a problem.
Alanna:I recognize it as a problem. I write about it as a problem. And I Right. I live in this world too. And this world was not meant for us.
Alanna:And it is and can be dangerous on many levels for women. I know that we are going to have to do work. I know that there are areas of some women's lives that they will not be able to change but what I want to offer are at least some steps for greater satisfaction and some pathways to at least recognizing where shift can occur. I'm a huge fan of curating. I love curating our life to the greatest extent that we can.
Alanna:You know, firing friends, setting strict boundaries on people who really don't serve and uplift us, shifting a situation where we can to something that is more nourishing for us. And then, you know, to me, this work on an individual level starts with the four keys. So, I outline in my book these four keys that are the foundation for what can be a satisfied life because I I don't want to tell women that I don't want to tell what they should do or how they should do it but really kind of get them back to their femininity themselves because it's not about being barefoot in the kitchen fixing dinner.
Wendy:Right.
Alanna:You could be changing your oil in your motorcycle and ready for a three day ride as a feminine woman. So, it's not about the what or the thing but about how you do it. Can you get to that place in your femininity and you can. You're going to you're going to ride that motorcycle differently than a masculine person. You're you're going to cook dinner.
Wendy:I do actually. Yeah.
Alanna:Right? Yeah. So, you know, the way that you do things, if you can do it from a feminine way and and women are really we're trained to don the masculine mask to survive.
Wendy:Yeah, I was hoping you would talk about that. Yeah.
Alanna:Yeah, that's a huge problem. So it's a safety mechanism. I get it. It's more valued. And so we have to armor ourselves.
Alanna:We have to man up for the world, but that also does a world the disservice because they don't see us as who we are. And so they can't respond to our natural femininity. If they see us as a masculine being, they are going to shift into the feminine. And that's not what we need.
Wendy:Right. But it makes sense that we would role model ourselves after men because we didn't have any healthy examples of femininity.
Alanna:Right. Because it hasn't been safe to be in women. Right.
Wendy:And you don't even how do you know where to start if you have so it's like, you look to the successful men, and then you're like, I'll just I'll just copy what they're doing.
Alanna:Right. Because that's been the only roadmap, which is why we need a new roadmap, which is part of the book. Let me
Wendy:go back to
Alanna:the four keys. Don't want to leave listeners hanging on the
Wendy:Yes, please.
Alanna:The four keys are required for this path of satisfaction to begin. So, number one is a sense of safety. Safe to be yourself in your body, your mind, your heart, in any environment, okay? Just a sense of safety, security, to know that your needs are being met either by yourself or those around you, a sense of trust in yourself to make good decisions for yourself and in those who occupy your space, you need to trust your world around you And the last one is to be cherished by the masculine. So again, whether that's your own internal masculine effectively offering cherishing or bowing down to the needs of the feminine or the masculine counterparts in your world, no matter what relation you have to them family, intimate partnerships, friendships the masculine cherishes you and for the masculine to cherish the feminine this is my favorite definition the masculine never leaves her alone in her pain without finding a solution.
Alanna:So the masculine effectively upholds the importance of the feminine intuition and emotions And when intuition and emotions arise, the masculine applies its incredible logic and reason, its problem solving, its focus, its direction, its action to say, Oh my gosh, I can see that there is discomfort here. Tell me more and let's alleviate it. And that's how we change course. That's how we get the masculine moving in a direction that is actually beneficial for all, not just them.
Wendy:The message we get though is to dismiss our emotions, right? Yes. In our culture, it's about we try to get rid of symptoms, right? So if you have emotional disruption or disharmony,
Alanna:Yeah.
Wendy:You're angry or you're sad or whatever. It's like, well, I gotta eliminate Yeah. Instead of listen to it. It there's a story there behind the symptom. Yeah.
Wendy:And then also the whole being labeled, you're too emotional and you're crazy. I I could just tell a little story real quick. Yeah. When I when I decided that I had made a really poor decision by getting married to my least favorite husband
Alanna:I did that too.
Wendy:I I the I mean, ignoring all of the red flags and all of all of the things, but it just hit me on an it was like a Wednesday afternoon, and then by Friday, I was, like, driving home about to tell him that I was done, and we had just gotten married. We'd been together for nine years, got married in the ninth year, and then we're, like, seven months into the marriage. Wow. And I was like, what the hell did I do? Big light went off in my head.
Wendy:And I sat him down and I told him, and he said, I think you're having a mental breakdown. And I was like, actually, I've never been more lucid in my life. Yeah. But that reaction was encapsulating what you're describing.
Alanna:And you're not alone. I recently watched a TV show called George and Tammy about George Jones and Tammy Wynette, the country singers.
Wendy:Yeah.
Alanna:And she was married in her 20s. It was probably in the 1950s or so and same experience that she was ready. She's like this guy is not for me. I'm ready to leave him and the reaction back then was not just to say oh you must be crazy. They actually put her in an institution and she suffered electroshock therapy more than a dozen times because a woman must be crazy to not want the man that she's with.
Wendy:Yeah. How sad is that? Well, and then you think about Freud had a big influence in that, calling women hysterical if they were
Alanna:Actually, that started from the Greeks.
Wendy:Oh, really?
Alanna:It's been since Greeks. We we've been doing this hysteria thing that women are hysterical. Their wombs wander around their body and cause them to be emotional. And, boy, we just don't want that. That is, I mean this is you know this is patriarchal.
Alanna:It's patriarchal because there's nothing wrong with a woman's healthy expression of emotions. There's nothing wrong with a woman's inner temperature saying that there's discomfort here, things need to change, this doesn't feel right. She's gonna feel it first and if it's not right for her, I promise it's not right for anyone else either. But the masculine doesn't like to change. Women exist in change.
Alanna:Our whole lives are changed. Every twenty eight days we experience tremendous change. We have two major bodily changes throughout our lifetime. Change is just at the heart of who we are. We have to live with it.
Alanna:We have to adjust to it. We're more used to it. The masculine doesn't have those emotional fluctuations or those biological fluctuations. They get them comfortable with change. They just want to stay the course they don't want to be bothered everything is fine nothing to see here but everything is not fine sometimes and sometimes there is something to see so it is the feminine's job to say hey masculine time to shift time to course correct.
Alanna:And again, with that strong, powerful masculine energy who is cherishing the feminine saying, yep, I don't want you uncomfortable, let's shift. That's really how we progress and move forward.
Wendy:Yeah. I'm thinking that the men in our lives would have to have a lot of self awareness though, right, to understand that? Because it feels like we'd have to be I can't imagine the amount of courage it would take to express your femininity in a way that feels organic and natural and have a real sense of personal power.
Alanna:That's the safety. That's one of those four keys. And if you're with a partner or a friend or a family member that you're not safe to share that with, Get out. Well, sometimes you can and sometimes that's the right option. Sometimes a lot of this has to do with improper training.
Wendy:Improper training. What do you mean?
Alanna:We're so enculturated. I don't know that anybody's Well, there are actually really great men's work groups out there doing this work for men and teaching them these things. But most men haven't been told like, Hey, a lady's emotions are not scary. Buckle in. It's going be all right.
Alanna:Listen to her. And actually, she might have something good to present you. Who says that to a young man? A lot of the narrative even for the masculine right now is still boys don't cry. Boys don't cry.
Alanna:Well, what? They cry. You're
Wendy:only successful
Alanna:if you continue to achieve. So there's not enough training. I think what it takes the masculine is love. I think it takes the love. If the love of the feminine, the cherishing of the feminine to listen, If they have the love and the their their beloved feminine partner says, hey, buddy.
Alanna:Look, I'm actually really uncomfortable and I need your help. The loving masculine will snap to and listen. I absolutely believe that. I don't think the problem is men. I don't think the problem is masculinity.
Alanna:I think the problem is the indoctrination of the culture and improper training.
Wendy:That's a great reframe. Yeah.
Alanna:Rather than just hit the eject button, because there's a lot of good men out there. And if you just say, Hey, here's actually what I need. That training, that clue and their love for you will have them go, You know what, let me try. It might be fits and starts, but I love you enough and let me try. If they don't try, if they're unwilling to shift, if they won't listen, then maybe it's an inject button moment.
Alanna:But I actually kind of cringe anymore with and this has been I think a lot of our history and growing up with this culture is if something doesn't work for you, you just leave.
Wendy:Gotcha, yeah.
Alanna:Right, well, that's not always the best pathway to realignment, to learning, to growth. It stunts the growth of both parties. So I would say at least offer an opportunity. And then if the opportunity is not taken, assess your options.
Wendy:Gotcha. Well, that's a good suggestion.
Alanna:Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. Well if someone's working with you then I could see that it would be worth the effort.
Alanna:Yeah. Yeah. Because we're working too. You know how many women have grown up in an environment where they can just emote freely without being asked, Oh, are you on your period? Or, Oh, you're so irrational right now.
Alanna:I'll talk to you when you're more logical. I think every woman, I don't know a single woman who in her lifetime hasn't at some point been called crazy, and even by someone that loves her. We need practice too. We need to push these boundaries and find out, hey, let me practice feeling safe here. And if I don't get a safe reaction, reassess and decide.
Alanna:Let me practice trusting this experience. And if it's not trustworthy, let me reassess and decide. We're going to have to try some of this on, especially if it's new in order to find out what the pathway for our own satisfaction is.
Wendy:Also a great point. I would love for you to talk a little bit more about trust because to me that's such a big word and it's it's not an automatic for many of us, especially when it comes to either trusting ourselves or trusting someone else or the world at large or whatever. My
Alanna:favorite concept or definition of trust actually comes from the work of the Gottmans who do a lot of work with relationships and they're brilliant. They talk about trust as always having, this would be in relationships, but I'll translate it for individuals and friendships too. Trust is always having the other person's highest interests in mind. So no matter what you're doing, like let's say you're out by yourself and you receive a text message from someone you maybe shouldn't receive text messages from, if you are trustworthy, you'll look at that text message and go, you know what, my beloved partner, if she finds out, this is going to hurt her. Let me just either shut it down or block and delete.
Alanna:So, it's an internal mechanism that always has the highest interest of the other person in mind. Now, for yourself, it's having your own highest interest in mind. It's what the the the Dalai Lama would call enlightened self interest. Now, by pursuing your own highest good, it's actually going to trickle out and be the highest good for everyone else around you too but I know a lot of women and maybe you do as well, who compromise themselves and their own needs by making choices they think is going to benefit someone else, but puts them at a detriment. That's not trustworthy.
Wendy:That's fascinating. Yeah, I'm thinking about the trend in the shamanic healing sessions I've facilitated over the last decade or so. And one of the first places my helping spirits go to, it seems, is the foundation of trust within the person, and that it's usually extremely damaged.
Alanna:Yeah.
Wendy:Or in some cases when the person is has a huge amount of trauma, they have no foundation of trust. They're just sort of a void inside of them.
Alanna:Well, I can guarantee you one thing. What's that? Trust for the feminine comes from listening to your intuition. Pure and simple. It's something that's inbuilt luckily within all feminine if you're on the feminine polarity.
Alanna:I mean, everybody, look, everybody has a sense of intuition, okay? We all have feminine and masculine. You've all got it. Right. But for the feminine woman, it is stronger and more powerful, but also probably more important for us.
Alanna:I know that anyone in their life who ignores their intuition will not be served by that, but particularly the feminine woman. And the way that I like to think of this is it's the voices and experience of all your foremothers coming through time, through your ancestry, through your DNA to speak to you. You are benefiting from all their incredible experiences and wisdom and they don't want you to suffer. They don't because they've been through it. They've been far, they've been through far worse than you will probably ever go through in your lifetime but that doesn't diminish your pain.
Alanna:It doesn't diminish your suffering. Just know. You have the benefit of this wisdom and when I hear my intuition, I actually hear my own grandmother's voice.
Wendy:That's sweet.
Alanna:Coming through time and you know, we have some of this like I know that sounds fanciful but there is a field of epigenetics that talks about how so much of who you are is actually built into your DNA and determined by the life your grandmother lived. That her food choices, her access to food is what creates uro digestion. There is a brain in your gut that tells you things, what to do, how to be in the world, and if you're not listening to it, you're you're kind of snubbing your nose at all of the amazing women who have gone before you. And if you trust your intuition, that is what is going to get you onto a path of safety, security, trust, and being cherished because that's all that your ancestors have ever wanted for you.
Wendy:That's beautiful. And it's also it's an innate superpower.
Alanna:Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy:Why wouldn't you want to have your intuition in your back pocket? Or
Alanna:And the thing is, is it doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't We need to give ourselves permission that logic is not intuition. And I know that we love logic and people are always asking us, well, can you be more logical? Can you be more reasonable in this case? No.
Alanna:And don't. Just stop. If you try to force logic and reason onto intuition, you're going to lose and you're going to quiet your intuition. Your intuition speaks more loudly the more you listen to it and the more you trust it and it does not have to make sense. It's an inner knowing that is yours that is going to lead you in a place and a direction that eventually will make sense but you're going have to live through it.
Alanna:So having some faith in your intuition is incredibly important. You don't have to know where it comes from. You don't have to know what it means. You don't have to justify it in any way, but you do have to follow it. Please.
Alanna:Yeah. At all costs.
Wendy:One of the things that really struck me too when I was reading your book was the whole needing to apologize for everything.
Alanna:Yeah. Yeah. We have to stop apologizing, for the bad behavior of the masculine. That's
Wendy:What do you mean by
Alanna:that? Well, I feel like we make a lot of excuses for the bad behavior of the masculine we just try to absorb it
Wendy:I got you okay we
Alanna:try to accept it we try to say oh you know he didn't mean that or oh you know what it's it's just locker room talk it's fine that's just what boys do you know no actually boys don't do that and they don't need to speak that way and they never need to treat us poorly there's no excuse making for that. And we as women never need to apologize for being who we are. Men don't do that. Men don't apologize for themselves.
Wendy:So true.
Alanna:Apology is reserved for when we actually screw up.
Wendy:Then it's more meaningful. Yeah.
Alanna:Yeah. Well, that's the only time apology is necessary. I even, you know, was caught out once. Apparently, in The UK saying excuse me is like an apology and as an American we say excuse me when we're just trying to get by somebody.
Wendy:Right.
Alanna:Right and it's like well I don't need to excuse myself for getting to where I need to go so there's a lot of kind of ingrained training again. On how we apologize for ourselves. I'm so sorry I'm late. No, it's like, I am late. You know, here I am.
Wendy:I'm owning it. Yeah.
Alanna:I'm owning it. I had, I was very busy and I'm glad to be here. We apologize for speaking too loudly. We apologize for our bad hair day. We apologize for being emotional.
Alanna:It's like, if you kick off what you're about to say with I'm so sorry but then everything that you say afterward has no meaning or influence or power. So I would like, I would strongly encourage women and this is a practice to stop apologizing for anything at all.
Wendy:Okay, I'm sorry.
Alanna:Right, unless you actually screw up then fine pull it out but otherwise just stop it.
Wendy:Yeah and really if you're saying it just to say it, it's meaningless.
Alanna:But it's a way to minimize ourselves further. It's a way affirming the fact that we're feminine and we're less valuable and important. I'm so sorry, excuse me. Can I sit down here?
Wendy:I'm sorry for existing.
Alanna:I'm sorry for existing. Take up space. May I take up just a little bit of space, please? Of course you can.
Wendy:As the I cringe as you're saying all that.
Alanna:Know. Know. Know. We're all
Wendy:guilty of it I think.
Alanna:So guilty and the image that comes to mind.
Wendy:Oh man.
Alanna:I have a PhD in mythology so I've got all these beautiful stories of mythology from around the world cultures and religions. One of my favorite stories of the masculine and feminine comes from Hinduism of the inception of the universe and the story of where it comes from. And the in this tradition, the masculine is very still and and truly the masculine at its best. It will be still. It will be intentional.
Alanna:It will have presence. It will have connection. It will have stability, steadiness. Wow. Right?
Alanna:So, the Naz is still beautiful, steady, masculine turns, just for some reason, has this has this inkling that over there is something to pay attention to and and turns slightly to see the feminine who is waiting with all that aliveness and energy inside of her body and she sees the masculine turn and she starts dancing and moving and she's uncontainable so she expands rapidly and beautifully to fit her environment and the masculine wraps her and holds her in this container and she just gets to exist wherever she wants to within it and he holds the space. The feminine is big, it's wild, it's loud, it's raucous, it's opinionated. It has ideas. It creates things. It thinks of things that were never there before.
Alanna:And the masculine holds it and makes it happen. Yes please.
Wendy:Partnership.
Alanna:Exactly. That's relational. That's relational.
Wendy:And that is not the seed of our cultural worldview is relational. It's colonial mind. It's domination of the environment. Individualized. Yes, that fierce independence and
Alanna:Yes.
Wendy:Yeah. So you're talking more about indigenous mind, which is relational. It's like in relationship with everything.
Alanna:Absolutely. And yes, it is indigenous mind, but it's also simply how our brain works. Like this is inbuilt. What we're experiencing with this individualism and this colonialism is unnatural for our biology, our psyche, our general makeup as human beings. It is not how we've evolved to where we are now.
Alanna:We didn't get this far with these big brains in our heads by ourselves. We did it through relationality. We did it through partnership with others. So we're built that way. To try and deny that is it's actually detrimental for everybody and causes suffering everywhere.
Wendy:Well, yeah. And if you think about it, that's the only way evolution can happen personally or collectively is when we bump up against each other. Like if you're sitting in a mountain cave somewhere meditating, you're never gonna Yeah. Yeah. You know what
Alanna:I mean? You cannot achieve the personal growth you seek by yourself. Right. You just can't. I mean, luck trying.
Alanna:You can do some, you can definitely do some, but you're not gonna get to the top of the mountain on your own.
Wendy:Excellent point. Okay, so Permission to Disrupt.
Alanna:Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah, I love that title of one of your chapters.
Alanna:It's my favorite chapter. I'm not
Wendy:gonna All right, so talk a little bit about that as we're winding down the conversation.
Alanna:Right. So I guess this kind of goes back to the women apologizing for themselves. We've been taught to stay small, stay meek, don't question authority, don't question your reality, just accept, move on. And by the way, exhaust yourself serving that reality that wasn't meant for you. Women are questioners.
Alanna:I also try to take back the term inquisition in the book because an inquisition is an inquiry and it's a term that's been used against us in history for women who had ideas and questioned their reality, they were questioned back and tortured and worse. But the Inquisition of a Woman is part of how we make, how we as the feminine help to make the world better. We're like the canary in the coal mine if you know that story. Coal miners used to have a little canary in a little cage down in the coal mine because its lungs are so delicate and soft and smaller. And if the air was too toxic before it hurt them, it killed the canary first.
Wendy:Right.
Alanna:So, they looked to the canary to see if the environment was safe and good. All women are like that. We are going to be the first to feel when something needs change. And the thing that I know and that you know and that all women listening know is when you feel that sense of discomfort, it doesn't rest.
Wendy:So true.
Alanna:It will not go away. It will fester inside of you until you speak up and do something about it. And historically, and even now, it has been dangerous for women to speak up. But that's part of how we've gotten here. We just keep letting things be the same.
Alanna:So we have to disrupt. We need to speak up. Because it is women who are at the forefront of anything changing. The masculine will not do it on its own. The feminine will do it.
Alanna:The feminine will say, This is where the course needs to shift. This is how things need to be different. This is where I'm uncomfortable. This is where I need a greater sense of comfort. And it will be to your detriment if you don't speak up.
Alanna:It will be to your detriment if you don't disrupt. It will be to your detriment if you continue to live with that sense of discomfort. It can actually cause you harm physically. It can create illness inside of you. It increases stress which of course is detrimental.
Alanna:So I absolutely give women permission to disrupt their environment, their family structures, their career, their friendships, anything where they feel a sense of discomfort or diminishment, it's time to question.
Wendy:Beautiful. All right. So Alana, the ways in which you work with people, you referenced a course?
Alanna:Yes. I have several online courses. You can find them all at my website, thesatisfiedwoman.com. So I've got a few different courses. One is Stop Calling Us Crazy, which is a guide to surviving every day in the patriarchy, because we have to.
Alanna:Another course actually brings my book, The Satisfied Woman, to life and gives you practical guidance and exercises to get the four keys established, to understand what healthy partnership looks like, to really go through life as a satisfied woman. And I also have a course called From Self to Attracting the Relationship You Deserve, because that's a huge consideration for feminine women. We need the support of a masculine partner at some point in our lives to really flourish and I want them to find it. So those are the three courses I have so far. I also have an app with a built in community for women to connect and talk to each other and discuss how to become more satisfied in this life.
Alanna:I've got a blog and I have my own podcast too, and it's all found at thesatisfiedwoman.com.
Wendy:All right. So just a quick little side note, what about same sex relationships?
Alanna:Yeah, absolutely. Do it. Do it any way that you want to. There's no boundaries on this. Remember, every human has both feminine and masculine And what we want is simply an oppositional polarity within an intimate partnership.
Alanna:It doesn't matter the gender, the sex, the orientation, how long you're in that partnership, what that looks like for you, all things are awesomely okay. And the opposing polarity between two individuals is what's going to give a relationship that fire, that special sauce, the ability to evolve and grow. That's with intimate partnership. Obviously, can have friendships and everything else with any polarity, but intimate partnership, you're going to do well to find someone on an opposing polarity than you whatever body they inhabit. I love it.
Wendy:And I have to say very inspiring. I really appreciate you coming on and chatting with me and sharing your message loud and clear.
Alanna:Absolutely. It's it's been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Wendy:You all fired up now? Ready to listen to those innate intuitions and let your emotions tell their stories? Are you ready to feel satisfied? To take one of Alana's online courses, buy her book, or listen to the Satisfied Woman podcast, please visit thesatisfiedwoman.com. Alrighty.
Wendy:We're more than halfway through season seven. How did that happen? Thanks for listening to this man bashing episode. I hope the rest of your day is a beautiful one. Claire and I will be back in a few weeks with the Raven's Daughter episode.
Wendy:Until next time.
